What is the difference between explicit and implicit cursors in Oracle?

Question

I am a bit rusty on my cursor lingo in PL/SQL. Anyone know this?

Answer 1

With explicit cursors, you have complete control over how to access information in the database. You decide when to OPEN the cursor, when to FETCH records from the cursor (and therefore from the table or tables in the SELECT statement of the cursor) how many records to fetch, and when to CLOSE the cursor. Information about the current state of your cursor is available through examination of the cursor attributes.

See http://www.unix.com.ua/orelly/oracle/prog2/ch06_03.htm for details.